What will college be like this fall? Evergreen, SPSCC and Saint Martin’s make plans
After being forced to teach online during the COVID-19 pandemic, Saint Martin’s University, The Evergreen State College and South Puget Sound Community College are set to return this fall to something that more closely resembles the traditional college experience.
Evergreen and SPSCC expect to offer hybrid programs combining remote and in-person learning, while Saint Martin’s University is aiming for a return to the classroom this fall.
“We believe that with the guidance we have received from the Governor’s Office and the CDC that we can re-open campus and return to face-to-face instruction, while providing our community with a “safety first” philosophy,” said Saint Martin’s President Roy Heynderickx in a message to the community and students posted on the university website. However, the university is working on a contingency plan in case that isn’t possible.
How many students do they expect this fall? It’s still too early to tell, university spokeswoman Genevieve Canceko Chan said in an email. However, the school is trying to offer extra financial support for students. The traditional tuition deposit deadline for new students was moved to June 1 from May 1, and the university announced a major gift to the school on Thursday.
Saint Martin’s Abbey has made a commitment of $3.5 million to the university to support students affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the largest gift the Abbey has ever made to the university.
The gift will provide direct emergency aid grants for Saint Martin’s students to ensure those in need of the extra, onetime support can continue pursuing their educational goals, university officials said in a news release.
“While we are optimistic about this year’s incoming class, looking across the higher education landscape, we are preparing, like other colleges, for scenarios where we might see anywhere between a 5 percent to 20 percent drop in enrollment,” Chan said.
For 2019, roughly 1,500 students were enrolled at Saint Martin’s in both undergraduate and graduate programs.
Still, there are some encouraging enrollment signs.
The school is seeing stronger enrollment numbers for its first summer session and pre-registration data for returning students this fall also has been strong, Chan said.
“We think part of that may be due to the sense of community we were able to maintain, even virtually, during the end of spring semester,” she said.
Students weigh their options
After the stay-at-home order was announced, Mc Erl Dave Andres, who graduated this year from Saint Martin’s, decided to stay in the area and finish his studies online rather than return to his family’s home on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The time difference was a concern, he said, plus he didn’t want to risk contracting the virus and passing it on to vulnerable members of his family. His grandmother has diabetes, he said.
He is now set to enter the school’s masters of education degree program in advanced teaching and learning.
Andres is not a fan of online learning, he said, because to become a teacher he needs to interact with his peers. Still, he believes in the mission of the university and the quality of its education. Andres said he is aware of students who are not fond of online leaning and are considering a “gap year” if that is the option.
Like many private colleges and universities, Saint Martin’s tuition is significantly more expensive than state-funded higher education. Website information shows that for a full-time student who wants to live on campus and receive meals, students will pay more than $50,000 for the school year.
However, with average financial aid applied, that can be lowered to about $20,000, the website shows, which is more in line with public options.
Andres said he received financial aid, federal student loans and help from his mother to pay for his education. In light of the pandemic, he also applied for financial aid through the federal legislation known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES).
SPSCC
During this past quarter, the community college actually saw its enrollment increase 1 percent, spokeswoman Kelly Green said, partly because a number of Thurston County area high school students elected to enroll in Running Start, the program that allows students to earn high school and college credit concurrently.
SPSCC picked up about 70 full-time Running Start students, she said. The college typically has about 6,000 students a quarter.
Meanwhile, the plan for fall quarter is to offer some hybrid programs that combine online and in-person learning. For example, political science can be taught online, Green said, but for its welding, automotive, nursing, culinary and soon-to-begin craft brewing and distilling program, hands-on learning is necessary.
“For those hands on programs, we don’t want students welding things at home in their garage,” she said.
Twenty-one students so far are enrolled in the brewing and distilling program, Green said.
Evergreen
At Evergreen, the hybrid learning approach already has started and will continue over the summer. By fall it is expected to expand, said academic dean Trevor Speller.
Speller oversees 50-60 academic programs for undergraduates at the four-year public liberal arts college, and faculty have requested that between a third and a half of those programs have some in-person learning, he said.
After the governor announced May 7 that essential workforce programs could resume, that cleared the way for a spring-to-fall Evergreen program called the Practice of Organic Farming, which takes advantage of the school’s organic farm. Twenty-three students are enrolled to learn more about the farm business, growing food, botany and soil science, he said.
That program began May 18, Speller said, but before they could do anything, the students had to run through health and safety procedures for the in-person learning, he said.
But how the uncertainty of the coronavirus will affect fall enrollment is still unknown, said spokeswoman Christine Hoffmann. Evergreen started 2019 with 2,854 students, she said.
State budget impact
Outside of a new approach to learning is the reality that the slower economy created by the pandemic shutdown will put a huge hole in the state’s budget, including funds for public universities and colleges like SPSCC and Evergreen.
The state Office of Financial Management recently distributed a memo to a wide array of state agencies and higher learning institutions explaining the situation.
Revenue collections over the next three fiscal years might be lower by as much as $7 billion. And even if the state taps all reserves, the shortfall is still expected to be $4.1 billion, according to the memo.
Given that scenario, the memo asks that all those agencies, as well as higher education, explore how they might operate if state-allocated funds were cut by 15 percent. SPSCC is taking it a step further and imagining life with a 20 percent cut, spokeswoman Green said.
During the Great Recession, SPSCC’s enrollment soared and its budget plummeted, she said. It took a decade to recover from the recession in terms of state funding, Green said.
Evergreen also got the memo.
“We are thinking about what we have to do,” Speller said.
This story was originally published May 24, 2020 at 5:45 AM with the headline "What will college be like this fall? Evergreen, SPSCC and Saint Martin’s make plans."
